50 pages • 1 hour read
Isabel CañasThe Hacienda
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 8-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary
In the morning, Beatriz realizes that there is a negative force in the house that grows stronger at night. Despite the hallucination she experienced the day before, Beatriz finds her silks completely clean in the morning, without any trace of blood.
Beatriz wanders around the house, making a list of everything she wants to fix. She decides to explore the north wing, which she finds undamaged despite Rodolfo telling her it is under repair. She places her list on a wall to write on it when the wall suddenly gives out, leaving a hole in the stucco. She pulls away the bricks and sees a skull staring back at her. There is an entire skeleton in the wall with its bones broken at odd angles. Beatriz rushes to the kitchen and tells Juana what she found. Juana looks shocked but follows Beatriz to the north wing. When they get to the wall, they find it completely intact. Juana mocks Beatriz and tells her to get more rest.
Chapter 9 Summary
Beatriz writes to Rodolfo asking for permission to have the house blessed by a priest, which he grants. Although Beatriz does not trust the clergy, she does not know where else to turn for help. At mass, Padre Guillermo promises to send Padre Vicente and Padre Andrés to bless the house.
The next day, Beatriz welcomes the two men into her home. Beatriz notices that Padre Andrés appears to be listening to something, and she wonders if he hears voices in the house as she does. Beatriz tells the priests that she invited them to the house because someone died there, and that spirit has possessed the house. Padre Vicente refuses to do anything besides bless the house because he thinks exorcisms are satanic. As they are leaving, Andrés tells her to come speak to him at mass, and he will help her.
Chapter 10 Summary
Rodolfo hears about Beatriz’s behavior from Padre Vicente and writes her a letter telling her to stop interacting with the church. Beatriz ignores this because she wants Andrés to help her.
Beatriz attends mass to speak with Andrés. When they are alone, she tells Andrés about all the supernatural activity at the house, and he believes her. He tells her that he will come the next day and that to protect herself, she should burn copal in her room because “it purifies […] surroundings” (102). Beatriz is relieved that someone believes her and that she will not be alone in the house anymore.
Chapter 11 Summary
Andrés arrives at San Isidro. He tells Beatriz that he wants to experience the house at night. Beatriz notices that he seems familiar with the house. He tells her that Ana Luisa is his aunt, and Paloma is his cousin. His mother lived at San Isidro until she married his father, but he visited his grandmother often because she lived on the land until she died.
Andrés decides that he wants to walk through the house without copal. They go up to the north wing together and find the wall collapsed again, revealing the skeleton inside. As they investigate the bones, the darkness jumps out at them and extinguishes Andrés’s candle.
Chapter 12 Summary
Surrounded by total darkness, Andrés and Beatriz make their way back to the parlor and lock the door. Andrés takes charcoal and begins drawing symbols and circles on the floor of the parlor while reciting incantations. As she witnesses his behavior, Beatriz realizes that he is a witch. Andrés asks Beatriz to keep his identity a secret, which she promises to do. Andrés tells her if the other priests discovered his secret, they would excommunicate him, and then the villagers would have no one to turn to because the Criollo priests do not understand them as Andrés does.
Andrés keeps watch while Beatriz sleeps. She dreams of a mattress slashed by knives and a blonde woman staring at her in the bedroom. The woman hisses at her, revealing long sharp teeth, and attacks her with her claws. Beatriz jumps awake as she hears a door slamming in another section of the house. More doors continue to slam as if the spirit is looking for someone. Andrés tells Beatriz his theory that houses absorb the feelings of the people who live in them. However, the hacienda feels different because whoever left the negative feelings in the house is still there, even if they cannot see them.
Chapter 13 Summary
Beatriz wakes the next morning feeling refreshed. Andrés tells her that he must leave for a few days to tend to a measles outbreak in another village.
Later, Beatriz asks why Andrés became a priest, and he tells her that his mother wanted him to be one. Beatriz tells him that she wanted to be a general like her father, and Andrés mocks her decision to marry a hacendado. Although this angers Beatriz, she knows that he does not understand what she has experienced. She reminds Andrés that she is Mestiza, telling him that her mother’s family only cared about “limpieza de sangre” or “cleanliness of blood” (135). Because of this, they disowned Beatriz’s mother for marrying a Mestizo man. Beatriz tells Andrés that because she has dark hair and skin like her father, she did not feel that she had the privilege of refusing Rodolfo’s offer of marriage. She married a Criollo man so that she and her mother would not starve.
Andrés is gentler with Beatriz after her vulnerability because he realizes they are more similar than he thought. He tells Beatriz that he hears voices in the house, but one voice dominates all the others. This is the one they must eradicate.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Andrés”
Andrés contemplates how much San Isidro has changed since his banishment. He feels a pull at the locked box inside his chest where he keeps the bulk of his power hidden and feels grateful that he did not have to unleash it the night before.
Andrés thinks about when he was younger. Titi told him that the church tortured witches because of their powers. Andrés found himself believing in the Christian God at the seminary and was surprised to see that everyone around him loved and accepted him. However, he knew that this love and acceptance was conditional because the clergy would turn on him instantly if they knew of his identity. When he unleashed his power in front of Beatriz, she did not turn away from him, and her reaction encouraged him. He feels himself developing feelings for Beatriz even though he knows it is a sin.
As he is leaving the property of San Isidro, Juana approaches him. She addresses him by his surname, Villalobos, subtly reminding him that his family has always served her family. Juana tells Andrés that he is trespassing on her property since María Catalina banished him, but Andrés replies that Beatriz invited him. As Andrés leaves, he worries that Juana will tell Rodolfo and that Rodolfo will hurt Beatriz because of Andrés’s presence at the hacienda. Andrés has seen Rodolfo’s violence before, and he wonders if he killed his first wife, María Catalina.
Chapters 8-14 Analysis
In this section, Beatriz begins to question her perception as she realizes that the house is awake and that “something lurk[s] in it during the day and [grows] stronger at night” (65). Juana’s dismissal and mockery of Beatriz’s experiences establishes her as the antagonist and someone that Beatriz cannot trust. Beatriz’s lack of support from anyone in the house causes her to seek help at the church in the hopes that they can exorcise the house’s demon. She finds an ally in Andrés, and their shared experiences in the house make Beatriz more confident in her own perception. This emphasizes the value of a supportive friend, along with the damage that detractors can do to one’s sense of self.
Although she turns to the church, Beatriz is skeptical of its intentions. Her distrust of the Catholic church ties into her cultural heritage, as the Mexican Inquisition suppressed Indigenous religions in Mexico. Even for Christian Mexicans, the threat of being reported to the Inquisition was a longstanding threat. Although Beatriz wants to have a priest exorcise the house, she knows that priests have political ties and that “their God is money” (82). Padre Vicente is an example of this kind of priest; he ignores Beatriz’s plight and simply blesses the house. He is a foil for Andrés, and his validation of the haunting draws Beatriz to him. Although both characters feel attracted to each other, Beatriz’s marriage and Andrés’s vocation make a relationship between them forbidden and taboo.
The novel’s rising tension occurs in this section as the haunting grows worse. Andrés’s arrival at the hacienda awakens something as the house senses his presence. Beatriz fears the house and wants it to be a safe place for her to live, yet she simultaneously feels like she wants to “burn the whole house to the ground” (112). This mirrors Beatriz’s situation as a woman—she wants a life that is secure and loving, but choosing Rodolfo has come with hidden dangers. Beatriz’s dream of María Catalina carries symbolic significance. Although she does not know that it is María in her dream at this point in the narrative, she dreams of a pale, blonde woman with beautiful clothes. María has sharp, vampiric teeth, and she leaps on Beatriz like an animal. Although Beatriz wakes up before María attacks her, her depiction as a devouring or blood-sucking creature signifies the ways the Spanish people born in Mexico are leeching off the land and that they will not let go until it is completely devoid of its original culture. In this instance, María represents the enduring effects of colonialism, even after a country achieves independence.
Cañas further develops the theme of The Trauma of Colonial Power in this section through the conversation between Andrés and Beatriz while they eat. Andrés mocks Beatriz’s decision to marry Rodolfo, which infuriates her. She believes that he could never “understand what it was like to be a woman with no means of protecting her mother” (134). Yet, as Beatriz reflects, she realizes that he has also faced discrimination as a Mestizo man, even if he does not understand what it is like to be a woman. With this, Cañas employs an intersectional feminist perspective, illuminating the way patriarchy oppresses different groups. Likewise, Beatriz’s description of her mother’s family’s obsession with the “cleanliness of blood” shows Andrés that she has experienced hardships that he is unaware of (135). Beatriz hates that her mother’s family “cherished that poisonous criollo obsession with casta, the belief that any non-peninsular heritage spoiled what was desirable and pure” (135). Beatriz knows that despite her mother’s love for her, her mother will never understand the way that Spanish people look at her because they see her as less “pure.” However, Andrés completely understands the dehumanization of racism because of his own experiences with the Spanish people at San Isidro. Their budding relationship as both friends and allies shows the power of coming together to fight a common enemy.
